130 THE PERSIAN POST-ROAD. 



*cash. Our Napoleons puzzled the officials greatly, their 

 value being utterly unknown to them ; indeed, I believe they 

 hadnever seen gold before, and the discovery of some 'Victor 

 Emmanuels' in the roll added greatly to their perplexity. 

 At last the formalities were completed, the Cossack escort 

 arrived, and we started for a forty versts ' drive to the 

 frontier-post. At the foot of the hill on which Nakhit- 

 chevan stands we encountered a stream, which, though 

 troublesome, was nothing after our sensational feat of the 

 day before. It had been more than enough, however, for 

 some Armenians, whom we met just before we reached it, 

 and who by exhibiting their soaked state tried to dissuade 

 us from attempting the passage. One of our Cossacks was 

 conducting a prisoner, whom he drove at the trot — probably 

 some Persian who had committed a theft, or come across 

 without a passport, and was being relegated to his own coun- 

 try. The poor wretch was allowed to mount in one of our 

 ' paraclodnaias,' for which he was very grateful. We waded 

 for fifteen versts across a plain more than half under water, 

 and then passed over a low chain of hills, beyond which we 

 came to the second river, comparatively a small one, on 

 the fui'ther bank of which stood the soHtary posthouse. 

 The whole scenery of the Araxes valley is wild, not to say 

 dreary ; but it is so utterly unlike anything we are ac- 

 customed to in Europe, that it has at least the charm of 

 novelty. The landscape now grew more and more savage. 

 Ararat, which had long served as a kind of familiar land- 

 mark in this, to us, unknown region, was lost to view 

 behind lower hills. In front a wild confusion of moun- 

 tains gathered round us, amongst which towered one huge 

 and, as one would have said before the fall of the Matterhorn, 

 inaccessible rocky mass, tower-like in form, and rising at 

 least 3,000 feet above its base. The Ai-axes is here 

 obliged to force its way through a gorge in the hills, and 



